Hybrid Cloud Is Transforming Enterprise-Level Business

Improving on the traditional applications and speed of operations with cost-effective solutions, enterprises are innovating using Hybrid Cloud.

What is Hybrid Cloud?

Plain and simple: it’s a mix.

Hybrid Cloud combines on-premise, private cloud and public cloud services into one IT environment.

Which in human speak means…

Once upon a time all business was conducted through snail mail. Yes, that’s right, you had to write a letter, post it and wait for the mailman to deliver it. Then wait for the recipient to write a response and post it back for delivery. The sorting, processing and delivery took days, sometimes weeks, in each direction. As you can imagine, this would take a lot of time.

So when the fax machine was introduced, it revolutionized the way business was done, giving businesses the ability to send those letters almost instantly.

However, for a long time a lot of businesses used traditional mail alongside a fax machine (and some still do today). Then you added email and scanning and now your business environment had uses for each of the functions separately and it would look something like this:

Accounting would use the mail services for things like cheques or invoices

Legal would use the fax machine to send manuscripts or debriefs

Staff would use email and scanning for interpersonal communications, or for customer relations

The result was a mix of services all delivering the same outcome: communications.

Hybrid Cloud is the same, a mix of services all delivering the same outcome: storing and sharing your company’s information and applications.

One of the challenges enterprise-level businesses face is if they have multiple locations that all have their own way of data sharing and compiling files. How cool would it be to turn your multiple locations into one virtual location? Accessible anywhere, anyplace, anytime with the levels of security you need to run your business, including automating critical processes.

That’s where the Hybrid Cloud can be a very good choice. When looking at your expansion and growth plans, and the technology challenges that you may face, having a mix of services that works for your needs is why Hybrid Cloud within enterprise has become very popular.

According to IDG Strategic Marketing Services White Paper, Hybrid Cloud Computing: The Great Enabler of Digital Business” (January 2016), businesses that moved significant computing capacity to hybrid cloud scenarios have been able to implement reductions in costs and look to digitally transforming their operations at both strategic and operational levels in order to reach their goals. These benefits include:

24% – reduction in IT costs when switching to a hybrid cloud scenario

39% – of cost savings reallocated to new initiatives

3x more likely to be approaching digital transformation goals

So now what? Where do you begin?

Strategize

It is not realistic to approach a move of this magnitude without strategy. Recognize your business needs and approach the right use of public and private cloud to determine the goals for the foreseeable future.

Prioritize

The focus should not be “I want a Hybrid Cloud,” but rather asking what mix of services will have your business moving together in the direction it needs to go. What can I move now, what can I move later? How can my cloud strategy be spread out into a plan that gets executed over one, two, three years?

In closing, I want to share with you an e-book from Microsoft titled Enterprise Cloud Strategy. In it, Barry Briggs, former Microsoft IT CTO and a technology thought leader, and Eduardo Kassner, the executive in charge of Microsoft’s Field Cloud Solutions Architects, write about the hybrid transition. In it you will find migration stories from real customers of real businesses, including best practices for applications and a section on categorizing.

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